


Phantasmagoria

by shcherbatskayas



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, Dangan Ronpa 3: The End of 希望ヶ峰学園 | The End of Kibougamine Gakuen | End of Hope's Peak High School, Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: Abusive Parents, All of my favorite tropes at once, F/M, Gen, Schizophrenia used as an insult by an abusive parents, i love my children, late birthday fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-21
Updated: 2017-08-21
Packaged: 2018-12-18 02:34:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11864835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shcherbatskayas/pseuds/shcherbatskayas
Summary: She was gone, but neverreallygone.





	Phantasmagoria

**Author's Note:**

> VERY late birthday fic for my son because summer homework is a killer. I literally did calculus for Fuyuhiko Kuzuryuu. That is Dedication. Unbeta'd and impulse written in 2.5 hours so all mistakes are on me this time. Also this was supposed to be like 1k, what happened??? Anyways, enjoy!!

The argument wakes him up at midnight and for a second, Fuyuhiko is scared. It’s a shameful things, for a ten-year-old yakuza heir to wake up scared, but what no one knows won’t hurt them. He stares into the darkness of his room with wide, unseeing eyes until he realizes that the yelling isn’t anyone being murdered, but it’s just his father fighting with Uncle Fumihiro again. 

After the incident in Osaka last month, all they ever did was scream, which was frankly, a little annoying. His father always yelled at both of them when he and Natsumi got into fights, but _he’s_ allowed to scream at his sibling so loudly that he wakes all of them up. Sure. Okay. _That’s_ fair. Fuyuhiko pulls the covers over his head and turns away from the door, trying to ignore the unfairness of the situation and the screaming and go back to sleep. The blankets are soft and thus should be harmless, but he pulls them so tightly around his head that he feels almost like his brain might explode. No matter how tight he pulls, Fuyuhiko can still hear the crashing of antiques and the bloodthirsty screaming and the sound of Armani shoes on wooden floors. 

Fuyuhiko gives up on sleep entirely after ten minutes and shoves the blankets off the bed. They couldn’t cover him from any of this. When he looks out the window, he can swear he sees wolves and he feels entirely certain that they’ve come to Kobe just to get him and all he holds dear. When he turns on the lamp, the wolves are gone.

The thing about his bedroom is that there isn’t much to do in it. Sure, he has his phone, but no one’s awake at this hour and Peko isn’t allowed a phone yet and Natsumi would laugh if he texted her. He doesn’t even know what he would say if he texted either one of them, anyways. He has some books, but it’s hard to focus on reading when he can hear the sound of what is definitely fingers breaking. Fuyuhiko knows what fingers breaking sounds like, but he can never remember if they’re made of cartilage or bone. He’s pretty sure that they’re bone, but he isn’t one hundred percent certain. He makes a note to himself to ask Peko in the morning. She always knows this sort of stuff and always knows the best person to ask if she doesn’t and she never mocks him for asking. It’s just one of the thousands of reasons Fuyuhiko thinks Peko’s the coolest girl in the world. So when he hears her name come it in the argument, he’s suddenly wide awake and focused only on the fighting. 

“I’m leaving!” Fumihiro declares, clearly fed up with the details of the Osaka incident and the broken fingers it resulted in. “And I’m taking that fucking assassin with me. I’m taking Peko. She was given to _me_ , so I’m fucking taking her.”

Something tightens in Fuyuhiko’s chest, something that makes him want to burst into tears and scream and possibly kill his uncle. He absolutely will not take Peko. He’s only ever seen her a few times, after all, and he knows Peko doesn’t like him. She tries to hide it, sure, but Fuyuhiko sees the subtle narrowing of her eyes and the way she stays one step closer to him whenever his uncle’s around. It’s such a small change that no one else really notices, but he’s known Peko his whole life. He notices. He can’t imagine a life without Peko in it. 

“Fine!” His father says, throwing one last vase to the ground. “You think I care about some little bitch? I wouldn’t be in charge of this god forsaken clan if I did. I can get a replacement. I can get ten replacements. So get going, Fumihiro. Get the fuck out of my sight and don’t you dare come back.” 

There’s the sound of Armani on the wooden floors again and Fuyuhiko throws his door open, running after the sound at full speed. He hears his father call his name, but he doesn’t stop. Fuyuhiko knows he’ll get a beating for his disobedience, but he doesn’t give a quarter of a damn. He catches Fumihiro a few yards outside of the servant’s quarters and tackles him, aiming for the knees. Fumihiro falls and Fuyuhiko gets in one punch, a clear break of the nose. Noses are cartilage. He memorizes the sound and what it looks like and makes a point to eventually get his fingers to see if it’s the same. 

His advantage doesn’t last long. Fuyuhiko may have had the element of surprise, but Fumihiro is bigger and faster than him and pretty soon, Fuyuhiko is flat on his back and gasping for air. 

“You can’t take Peko.” He manages to wheeze out, trying in vain to get up. But Fumihiro has his shoes on his chest and is pressing down hard, hard enough that he’ll certainly have bruises in the morning, so the endeavor is useless.

“I can do whatever the fuck I want, kid.” Fumihiro says, rolling his eyes at his nephew. “This isn’t your business.”

“It sure as shit is my business!” Fuyuhiko exclaims, scratching at Fumihiro’s legs. Later, he’ll realize that this is the first time he’s ever sworn at an adult, but now, it doesn’t register. All that registers is that this man, this good-for-nothing uncle, this son of a bitch who got twenty people killed in Osaka, is trying to take his friend and Fuyuhiko will die before he’ll let him get away with it. 

As it turns out, Fuyuhiko doesn’t have to die. He doesn’t even have to wait for Fumihiro to respond because there’s Peko, descending from the ceiling rafters like some sort of angel and smacking Fumihiro right between the shoulder blades with her shinai. He falls, landing to Fuyuhiko’s left, and Fuyuhiko takes the opportunity to get up. Peko delivers the beating of a lifetime, hitting his chest with neat, perfect strikes. Fuyuhiko kicks where she doesn’t hit, occasionally pausing to cough up a lung. He doesn't do nearly as much damage as Peko, but there’s something satisfying about beating the man who threatened to take her away to a bloody pulp. The moon shines down on them and Fuyuhiko imagines it’s smiling in approval. 

It lasts all of a minute, right up until his father arrives. “Fuyuhiko!” He shouts, grabbing him by the shoulder and pulling him away. Peko stops for a moment and looks at his father, tilting her head slightly to the side as if waiting for permission to continue. He shakes his head, not granting it. 

“He attacked the young master.” Peko explains, her voice almost comically empty of any emotion. 

“It doesn’t matter now. He’s leaving, and you’re going with him.” His father says, closing the matter with just seven words.

“You can’t be serious!” Fuyuhiko says, recoiling as if he’s been slapped. “He can’t take Peko!”

“It’s the only way he’ll ever leave. Pack your things, girl. You aren’t coming back. In fifteen minutes, if you two--” He points to Fumihiro, who’s still writhing on the ground, and Peko, whose eyes are so wide Fuyuhiko thinks they might pop out of her head. “--aren’t gone and you--” He points to Fuyuhiko, who can only look at Peko and reflect her horror back at her. “--aren’t in bed, I’ll shoot all three of you. It’s 12:08 now. I’ll be back here at 12:23 exactly and you all better be where you’re supposed to.”

Fuyuhiko turns his face away from Peko to watch his father stalk down the hall. When he turns back to Peko, he realizes that he’s crying. Peko takes a step towards him and then takes two steps backwards. She wrings her hands, places her shinai on the ground, and takes a deep breath. 

“Young master.” She says, pausing to try and find the rest of her statement. It’s lost when Fuyuhiko rushes forward and hugs her. He hasn’t hugged her in years, but he has to hug her now, has to hug her before she goes for who knows how long. He refuses to believe it’s forever. 

“Fuyuhiko.” He corrects, his voice breaking pathetically. “It’s just Fuyuhiko. It’s always just been Fuyuhiko.” He’s sobbing now and Peko starts crying too and hugs him back. Fuyuhiko knows it’s weak of him to hug someone and cry, but Peko is the only friend he has. 

Fumihiro gets up. Fuyuhiko doesn’t know how he does it, but he does. “Get packed, bitch.” He barks at Peko. “And where do you keep the fucking Vicodin in this house?” 

“Third floor bathroom.” Peko says, letting go of Fuyuhiko and wiping her eyes. “You have to press the button under the medicine cabinet to get to it.”

Fumihiro says nothing and limps off, taking his phone from his pocket as he does. Fuyuhiko stares at Peko, trying to memorize her as she is. She is taller than him by at least five centimeters, her hair unbraided and wavy and all the way down to her collarbone. With her pale skin and silvery white hair and white pajamas and red eyes shiny from tears, she almost seems to glow in the dark. 

“I should pack my things.” She says, turning back towards the servant’s quarters. It’s then that Fuyuhiko gets an idea. 

“I’ll be right back!” He tells her, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand and forcing himself to breathe normally and stop crying. Peko nods and heads back and Fuyuhiko runs into his mother’s room. 

She’s awake. Of course she’s awake. She looks at him and raises an eyebrow, but he shakes his head and makes his way to her jewelry cabinet. Clearly, she already knows what’s going on. Clearly, she doesn’t give a damn. 

His mother’s first engagement ring sits right where he knows it will, at the back of the bottom drawer. Before she was married to his father, Fuyuhiko knows she was married to another man. Fuyuhiko knows she loved him because she never spoke of him directly. It was the only thing that caused her any pain. It was the only reminder he had that she was a human being and she had tried to cast it out for years. He hesitates, almost not wanting to take it, but she looks at him and nods her head once. 

“Take it.” She says, her voice distant and cold, but not quite frozen. “I ought to have gotten rid of it years ago. I only ever kept it to spite your father, you know. I haven’t thought about him in years.”

Fuyuhiko almost wants to call her out on her lie, but this is the only time she’s been nice to him in three months and he can’t afford to waste it. He takes it along with a plain silver chain. “I’ll pay you back. How much did it cost? 400,000 yen?”

“Not even close.” She chuckles, taking a sip from the glass of wine she always kept at her bedside table. “Try 40,000 yen. It’s a sapphire, not a diamond, and we were poor as dirt in those days.”

“40,000 yen.” Fuyuhiko repeats. “Plus 100,000 as a thanks.”

“I don’t want your money, boy. Take the ring and go.” She waves her free hand at him and Fuyuhiko catches a glimpse of the clock. 12:16. Right. 

“I love you!” He calls out as he starts running again, ignoring the pain in his chest that’s either from Fumihiro’s shoes or Fumihiro’s actions. 

“A terrible mistake, really.” She calls back, shutting the door behind him and locking it so that she could weep in peace. 

When Fuyuhiko finds his way back to the servant’s quarters, Peko has all of her clothes folded and packed excluding the ones she’s wearing. The various other servants are awake, whispering and running around and looking at him with kind, sympathetic eyes. 

“Give us a few minutes.” He says to the nearest maid, who heads towards the door and beckons the others to follow her. Peko stays where she is, sitting next to her mattress and fussing with a hangnail. Fuyuhiko sits in front of her and holds out the ring on a chain. 

Peko looks at it and reaches a hand out to touch the ring. She pulls it back and then reaches again, touching the ring gently. “Is it...Is it for me?”

“Of course it’s for you.” He says, holding back another cough. Fumihiro got him good. “I’m not like, proposing or something stupid like that, but...It’s like a promise. That we’ll find each other again and be the best friends and yakuza duo ever. The person who gave it to my mom cared about her a lot and I care about you a lot and all of that, but I’m not gonna get shot in some back alley in Tokyo and you aren’t gonna marry some guy you hate and be miserable for the rest of time. Okay?”

Peko actually smiles at him, a sight so rare he nearly forgot what it looked like. “Okay.” She agrees. Fuyuhiko puts the necklace on her and takes a moment to admire how it shines in the moonlight and how nice it looks on Peko and how nice she is in general. Then she starts rummaging through her bag and pulls out one of her two ribbons. “It isn’t an engagement ring, but...It’s what I have to give.”

“It’s beautiful.” Fuyuhiko says, sticking it into his pockets. “I have one and you have the other. That way I can look at it and remember you and you can look at it and remember me and neither of us will be lonely while we look for each other.”

Before Peko can respond to that, Fumihiro opens the door. He looks at the two of them and scoffs, sticking his hand in his pockets. “It’s 12:21. Car’s out front.” 

Peko gets up and grabs her bag. “I love you.” She says, and before Fuyuhiko can ask exactly how she loves him and tell her that he loves her, too or even before he can hug her again, she’s following Fumihiro down the hall and like a ghost, she is gone without leaving a single trace.

Fuyuhiko spends the rest of the night in the servant’s quarters, holding the ribbon in his hand and crying into the shoulder of Kirumi Toujou, the head maid. After that night, he swore never to cry again. 

***

Time moves on after that. Fuyuhiko spends three days recovering from all of his injuries. He and Natsumi shun their father for two weeks in protest. For his birthday, he wishes for Peko’s return. She doesn’t come. He gets a full force of bodyguards to replace Peko and immediately sends away all of them but one to search for her. They trace her to the airport in Tokyo the two afternoons after she was taken, but they fail to find where she went. He fires all of them but the one after that. 

In between lessons and training to be the yakuza heir, he finds a list of every flight that left Narita International Airport and calls up every captain, flight attendant, and passenger he can find the name and number for asking about a silver haired girl who looked too young to travel alone. He finds three different people on three different flights who remember someone who looks like her. One was to Shanghai, the other to Jakarta, and the third to Seoul. He brushes up on his Mandarin and learns basic phrases in Korean and Malay as he prepares to call around. 

As it turns out, he doesn’t have to. Five months after he took her, Fumihiro Kuzuryuu returns with eight million yen and begs for forgiveness. His father, after negotiating affairs per city and how much control he’ll be given, accepts. Fuyuhiko’s forgiveness hinges on one question. 

“Where’s Peko?” He asks, folding his arms across his chest and glaring. 

“I put her on a one-way flight to Jakarta. No one’s been able to find her since.” He says, almost as if the whole situation is an afterthought. 

Fuyuhiko breaks each one of his fingers after that. It’s a methodical, thoughtless thing. Fingers are made of bone, he finds out after he sees the bone crack through the skin. They’re bone, not cartilage. 

***

Fuyuhiko starts seeing her everywhere, after that. Or at least, he thinks he does. It’s stupid, paranoid thinking not suited for a yakuza heir, but he swears that she’s nearby. He sometimes thinks he can hear the soft sound of her footsteps in the garden or can feel her brush against him. It’s never her, though. It’s always just someone on tip-toes or him hitting a wall or something silly. Still, he feels as if she’s haunting him, but he doesn’t mind. It makes the slow process of finding her easier. 

Once his Malay is good enough to start asking people, they forget. They might’ve seen a silver haired girl, maybe. She might’ve taken a taxi, or maybe stayed at a hotel. She could’ve been wearing a ring around her neck and a ribbon in her hair, or maybe it was just a ribbon or just a ring. All leads lead to nothing and he realizes that the only way he can find her in Jakarta is if she makes some sort of appearance on the crime scene. He sets up a few drug businesses in port cities and prays. It’s all he can do. 

***

He takes a trip to Tokyo for his thirteenth birthday. He doesn’t like Tokyo very much, but the restaurant they rented out is very nice and the foolish, childish, hopeful part of him hopes that there’ll be a clue there. His frantic search for Peko in the first year and a half after her disappearance has become a joke among his father, his uncle, and him. The only reason Fuyuhiko lets it happen is because he hopes that they’ll mention her real location in a subtle joke one day. It’s a conniving trick, a suggestion that originally came from Natsumi, but it’s a good one. He’s learned not to take her words for granted. 

On the way to the restaurant, they stop at a red light and he looks out the window of the limousine. People are rushing by and one of them is a tall, lanky girl, too skinny for her own good. Her hair is hidden beneath a hood, but he sees a glimmer of something shiny around her neck and hopes. She glances at the limousine, but the windows are tinted. She can’t see him. But Fuyuhiko can see her. The girl is too far away from him to clearly see what color her eyes are, but he sees glasses on her face and the shape is familiar. Before he can point her out to Natsumi, they’re moving again. 

***

A month later, the head of an enemy clan is found dead in his own dining room. Decapitated by a teenage girl disguised as a maid. She was tall, they said. Skinny, too. Her hair was black and her eyes were black, but she wore glasses and a silver chain around her neck. No one ever saw what hung on the end of it. Fuyuhiko hopes against hope that she’ll appear in Kobe. No girl matching that description ever does. 

***

A strange girl, tall and skinny with a sword bag on her back and a chain on her neck, passes by his middle school one day in early October, not too long after the murder of the enemy clan leader. Fuyuhiko sees her and she pulls on the chain. It’s hard to see in the sun, but he’s fairly certain a ring hangs on the end of it. Fuyuhiko evades his guards and follows her into a back alley, but a car is waiting for her and the driver is beeping their horn. 

“Peko!” He calls out, running towards her and catching her wrist. She looks at him and smiles and yes, yes, this is Peko, it’s _her_ and Fuyuhiko is so happy he could cry and he damn near does until the driver beeps their horn again and screams something out in what he thinks is Malay that all of his studying never taught him. Fuyuhiko didn’t bother to teach himself the swearing, and he regrets it so strongly in that moment that he swears to himself that he’ll go home and study the language until he’s fluent. 

“I’m so sorry.” The girl says, tilting her head slightly to the side. Fuyuhiko lets go of her and she runs off, saying something back in a language that is definitely not Malay and the car drives off. Fuyuhiko memorizes the license plate and writes it down along with the description of the car. His guards find him again and he heads home, where he passes out and wakes up with a fever bad enough to send him to the emergency room. 

He tells Natsumi about the vision after the fever has passed, but she rolls her eyes at him and snickers in a way that she thinks makes her look like the antagonist of an American 80’s movie but really makes her look like she’s trying not to sneeze. Still, Fuyuhiko sees something hopeful behind them and knows that she wants to believe as much as she does.

***

Natsumi gets drunk on saki during her birthday and tells Uncle Fumihiro and her mother about Fuyuhiko’s vision, laughing her ass off the entire time. Before Fuyuhiko can give her the scolding of a lifetime, his mother finds him and beats him half to death while screeching and hopelessness and abandonment and how Peko was probably dead in Jakarta somewhere, but mostly about him, who she decides is a weakling, a schizophrenic, a hopeless romantic, a shame to the family. She’s drunk out of her mind. Fuyuhiko doesn’t forgive her for it. He also does not mention any possible Peko sightings again, even though he swears he sees her three more times that spring in a small town outside of Sapporo. He keeps his hopes entirely to himself.

***

And then, after two or so years that felt like two or so centuries, a man from Hope’s Peak arrives to speak with him. Fuyuhiko’s already received his letter so the arrival confuses him, but he rolls with it. 

“We have an acceptance letter for your sister.” Kizakura says, pulling out a letter from his pocket. “One of our spots in the other homeroom got opened up.”

“That’s nice for my sister.” Fuyuhiko is genuinely fairly happy for her, but none of it shows on his face. This is clearly business, and so his business facade is on. “But I doubt you traveled all the way out to Kobe to tell me that some fucker dropped out and left a space for Nat, did you?”

“You’re clever.” He says, and that’s when he opens the briefcase. Inside are a variety of files. He pulls out two of them along with a check for a few hundred thousand yen. “There’s two students we’re having a rather difficult time tracking down. We know their talents, know approximately where they live, know their friends and family, but we can’t quite get them. Hope’s Peak was hoping we could borrow a few of your men for assistance.”

“Hm.” Fuyuhiko flips through the first file, finding lengthy descriptions of identity fraud and uncanny impersonations that have all been traced back to a chubby, dark-haired boy living half an hour outside of Sendai. It doesn’t look like it will be too difficult for his men to find him, but it would be a bit tedious. 

The second file is a bit more complicated. An Ultimate Swordswoman. Something light and warm fills his chest when seeing the title, but he takes a drink of the water that was set on the table and tries to ignore it. The swordswoman has been criss-crossing Asia for five years. The first sighting of her was in Jakarta. She was in Japan at least once and is reported to be actually be Japanese native. She’s an assassin, but more than that, she’s a swordswoman, a true samurai bound to higher things than money, like honor and duty and justice. 

They don’t have a name, but they do have a picture. She’s tall and too skinny for her own good. She has red eyes. Glasses. Silver hair that hangs halfway between her shoulders and her elbows. It’s tied back into a single braid by a white ribbon. Something silver glints around her neck. It’s dark in the photo, but she seems to glow in the dark. Her face is somewhat obscured, but the shape of it is familiar. Fuyuhiko wants to deny it, but he can’t. He knows who she is as certainly as he knows his own reflection. 

“Okay. I’ll bite. Twenty men should be enough for both of them.” He focuses on keeping himself as calm as possible, but there’s color in his cheeks and Fuyuhiko is so damn happy he could break out into song and run around the house for three hours straight. 

“That’s reasonable.” Kizakura seems to sense that something is up, but he doesn’t ask about it. “It’s been a pleasure doing buisness with you.”

“The same to you.” Fuyuhiko repeats the formality, but for once, he actually means it. 

***

His men return three days later. One of them has a broken wrist and a bruise on his throat and the other ended up blind in one eye, but the rest are no worse for the wear.

“We tried to sneak up on the sword girl.” The blinded one explains. “Didn’t go too well. She took out Akagi in three seconds then dropped a cigarette in my eye. Bitch said she didn’t even smoke, just carried cigarettes to burn people’s retinas if they snuck up on her and she didn’t want to use her sword anymore. Fuckin’ crazy ass girl you’ll be sharing a homeroom with, boss.”

“Don’t sneak up on an assassin next time, dumbass.” Fuyuhiko rolls his eyes at him. “Now get gone and have Dr. Nakata check out that eye. God knows what the ER doctors tried to do with it.”

Once his unfortunate man is gone from his sight, Fuyuhiko doesn’t even bother trying to hide his grin of pride. 

***

Two weeks later, the full homeroom list is sent to him. Right in the middle of the list is the name Peko Pekoyama. 

***

He spots her during orientation. She sits towards the back of the auditorium, hands folded in her lap and watching everyone move around. No one sits with her. His parents choose a seat two rows back from her, clearly oblivious to the fact that this is Peko Pekoyama. Fuyuhiko sits with them, watching Peko sort through the papers in between examining them himself. She looks taller than the pictures made her out to be and a bit thinner, too. Fuyuhiko can’t help but wonder how much she’s been eating, if she’s had a stable roof over her head for all these years, how many nights she’s gone hungry. He never considered himself domestic or concerned with others and he knows she’s more than capable of taking care of herself, but looking at Peko, he wants to cook her a warm meal and make sure she gets enough sleep and possibly even sleep next to her. 

The ribbon that holds her hair back is the same one from all those years ago, the same one that sits in his pocket. Fuyuhiko sees the silver chain around her neck as well. The bottom of the chain is tucked into her uniform shirt, but he’s confident the ring still hangs on it. Halfway through a speech from the headmaster, she turns to look at him. He knows that she must’ve known he would be here, but she looks surprised to see him anyhow. Fuyuhiko feels the same and he doesn’t understand why, but the surprise isn’t bad. 

Next to him, Natsumi smacks his shoulder. Hard. And then pinches her own arm harder to test if she’s dreaming. “I’m losing my fucking mind.” She whispers to him. “I’m losing my fucking mind or that is Peko Pekoyama.”

“It’s Peko.” He says. “I’d bet my life on it.”

“Jesus.” Natsumi comments. “Peko Pekoyama. Jesus.”

In front of them, Peko twirls a pencil in her hand and it “accidentally” goes flying back. Fuyuhiko catches it and leans over the seats to give it to her.

“Your pencil.” Fuyuhiko mutters, unable to find more words in a crowded auditorium. She looks at him and takes the pencil. While he was focused on catching the pencil, she had moved the chain so that the ring now hung in full view. A grin split his face in two and Fuyuhiko fought the urge to start crying from joy. This was no phantom. This was Peko, as real as he was. 

“Thank you.” She says, taking it back and giving him a piece of paper in return. It was folded carefully, designed to be hidden in his palm. Fuyuhiko kept it there and didn’t open it until his parents were gone from Hope’s Peak and he was alone in his dorm room. The handwriting was swirler than he remembered, but still definitely Peko’s.

 _If you want to talk to me, I’ll be in the gardens at 8:30. If not, I understand. Things have been strange for many years, but I’ve missed you._ Then, at the bottom, a post note. _I never stopped looking for you._

At 8:30, Fuyuhiko started heading towards the garden, his hand playing with the ribbon in his pocket. He wasn’t sure what they would do, if they would fall into the familiar rhythm of friendship or something more or simply become strangers. There was so much to talk about, so many questions to answer, so many things that could go wrong, but he had a chance. Fuyuhiko had a chance to make things work, and that was more than he could’ve dared to ask for.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy birthday, Fuyuhiko!


End file.
